Rants & Raves

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Rants & Raves

Date: Friday, February 21, 2003 5:11 AM

From: Donotspam Me (srorick@earthlink.net)

Subject: Hackers Run Wild and Free on AOL

Thank you for the report about AOL being hacked ("Hackers Run Wild and Free on AOL," Feb. 21, 2003). For more than 6 months I've tried to stop spam coming to me by following the guides of a spam abuse website. I wrote to postmaster@ enclosing the return path of each spam and requesting that my address be removed from the list. AOL and Yahoo always responded promptly, courteously. Others didn't respond at all. For my effort, spam only increased, especially since December 2002, because I don't have the tracking skills to locate who is dispensing my address around the world. Two days ago, when a spam e-mail offered to sell to me "Millions of addresses of PayPal members for $4/month," I contacted PayPal to question their statements about member privacy, and I sent that offending return path to them to legitimize my query. PayPal's reply didn't fully satisfy me, however, spam has stopped pumping into my mailbox (down to 2 or 3 daily) since I communicated with PayPal. I'm not their member. Should PayPal be kissed or kicked? Why should it take me so long to locate the obscure entity or conduit that dispenses my private address to spam scum? How can I fight a better fight to stop commercial solicitations over the Net? How can my address be made totally off limits to unsolicited, undesirable commercial mail?